We just received this notice from Hexonet that The .CLUB Registry is going to be increasing their price of a wholesale registration each year over the next three (3) years.

The first of such price increases will be July 1, 2019, when the price for .CLUB will be increased to:

Reseller Price Class: $20.83 (net price: $17.50) USD/Domain/Year

Premium Price Class: $18.45 (net price: $15.50) USD/Domain/Year

Platinum Price Class: $16.54 (net price: $13.90) USD/Domain/Year

As a customer of .CLUB domain names, we highly recommend you do the following:

1. Renew any .CLUB domain names for multiple years prior to the price increases.

2. Register .CLUB domain names for multiple years prior to the price increases.

In 2020 and 2021, similar price increases from the .CLUB Registry will go into effect (for instance, Reseller pricing is scheduled to increase to $21.42 (net price: $18.00) USD and $22.02 (net price: $18.50) USD respectively). The public notice of these price increases for subsequent years will be announced through our newsletters.

Of course retail prices will vary by registrar

According to the .Club registry which sets the wholesale price they told TheDomains.com that

As the Registry Operator, we only set the wholesale price for a domain registration/renewal.

Our registrar and reseller partners are responsible for setting their desired margin and retail price, and, frankly, there is a wide range of retail pricing with registrars marking up our wholesale price from as low as 10% to as much as 100% or more.

We have no control over this.

Our current wholesale price is $8.05 and has been such since we launched in May of 2014. We announced to our registrars a plan for modest wholesale price increases over three years as follows:

This represents a price increase of a total of $1.90 over the course of eight years, and in our eighth year of release, our wholesale price will remain less than $10.00. This is very much in line with .COM and .NET and far below the average cost of other gTLDs. We announced this three-year plan to continue our policy of transparency and to give our registrar partners, and you, the confidence of long term price stability.

It is a competitive retail market, so please check prices at different registrars.

About Michael Berkens

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 8K domain names . Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest.

Not sure this applies to what anyone has said here but I find it funny how some people who will register a domain for $8.00 and immediately put a $10,000 price tag on it (like I do) will then criticize registrars for their pricing of domains. The domain industry is a celebration of the free market, of freedom of commerce. As long as no dishonesty is involved let everyone price their domains (or tickets or loans) as they will. The only time the government should restrict pricing, in my opinion, is when a company has received government assistance (i.e. been awarded a monopoly of some kind).

The people who run .club are super nice, in my experience. I hope this change works out great for them.

.club is only staying above water through registration prices of 99 and less, a lot of it is now “Chinese promotions” and very low prices. They probably need to increase prices on non Chinese renewals to try and prevent revenue from falling. I would guess they will need to do a lot more price rises in the future and cut most marketing at some point.

I wouldn’t want to be a member of any .club that would accept me, so I pass. Goal for 2019: renew best domsins while keeping my day jobs. I thought .app was the best of the GTLDs followed by .club but maybe .app will be a bust too for aftermarket sales. Prediction verisign will keep .web on a chair in the basement until 99 percent of the GTLDs have flamed out. So maybe 2020.